World traveler and baseball connoisseur…follow me as I embark on an incredible journey around the Major Leagues. Twitter: @MLBwayneMLB

September 10th, 2013

This game was so much fun. The last game I went to was July 24th, so it had been a while since I stepped foot into Safeco Field. This would be my fifth game of the season and probably one of the last ones I’ll be attending. I’m certainly making the last game of the season, like always.

I came into the stadium as the gates opened and lollygagged in the Pen’ for a while. I caught up with long time Mariners fans, Carla and Chris and then without any real warning, one of the bullpen cops tossed me a baseball. I guess I’ll go ahead and count it as a Ballhawk stat on Mygameballs.com. I haven’t really been active on any Ballhawking this season mainly because I just wanted to do more of nothing at the game instead of trying to chase baseballs for three hours all the time.

I wandered down into the lower seating bowl and immediately noticed Erik Bedard sitting on the wall. That dude is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met at the stadium. Well, besides Tom Wilhelmsen, Miguel Olivo and Zach Britton. Seriously, though. He was so nice. He signed everything everyone handed him, he talked about his adjustment from starter to bullpen and he talked a little bit about how the minor leagues worked. I didn’t catch everything he talked about but he was so fan-friendly. This was the end result of my interaction with Bedard:

While watching batting practice, I noticed the fan base for this game was incredibly low. So I checked with a near-by usher and she told me the attendance would be around 8,000. A new Safeco Field record, by the way! I immediately upgraded my CF bleacher tickets to RF tickets in hopes I’d catch a home run ball. But not just any home run ball. I wanted to catch a Raul Ibanez home run ball. Not only is he sitting on 297 career dingers, but he is also two home runs shy of breaking Ted Williams record of being the oldest player to hit more than 29 home runs in a single season. You catch that puppy, you’ll be in the record books! Haha! A sports fan can dream, right?

So there I sat with my friend Chris. We upgraded our seats and sat four rows back from right field. We also weren’t sitting in our seats. We just picked a random, clear aisle to sit in in case anything came our way. Had we been sitting in our seats? We would have been this guy:

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Yup, that’s right, folks. That baseball was Abe Almonte’s first career big league home run and it landed right into the lap of the dude who was sitting in our seats. We had moved down to the front row to sit with Amy Franz (The Ichiro Meter Lady) and her family. Maybe if we had stayed in our original seats, we would have been able to make a better play on that ball. Or maybe if we moved to our right seats, we would have caught it. Anyway, there are a lot of “what-ifs” that can be thrown around in these situations. It’s best not to dwell on the whole thing but it would have been fun to catch a players first big league dinger.

Here’s a picture of me attempting to get into position to make the grab:

Seriously. I have the toughest time trying to track the baseball and worry about other fans in my way, steps and railings, too. I don’t know how these fans who have caught multiple home run baseballs do it. I’m so worried about tripping over steps and stepping on peoples stuff and running into other fans all while trying to watch the baseball. It’s so different off the field. I suspect it takes a special kind of person to catch home run baseballs. I sure as hell can’t do it. I mean, if it were hit right to me, yeah. I remember one game I was at, (this was during BP) where a baseball was hit in my direction. I saw it coming, turned and took a few steps up the rows, turned back and around and caught the ball. It seemed easy enough but it was also during BP where no one was around me and I knew that. Sitting in the outfield is way different.

ANYWAY. I left the game in the 8th, came home, checked Twitter, saw that the Mariners had lost. I just had to laugh to myself. I really like the Mariners, in fact, and I’ve said this so many times, I’ve been a fan since 1989, but really, this team has got to start winning. I thought for sure it would’ve been a great year with Morse, Morales, Seager, Ackley, Iwakuma…but it turned out to be another flop. Rumor has it that Ackley doesn’t like playing in Seattle, Brendan Ryan was just traded to the Yankees and Morse didn’t last very long in a Mariners uniform. Rumor also has it that Morales will be gone by the start of Spring Training.

Sigh. Fiddlesticks.

Well, on a more positive note; my charity is going well. Here’s the latest breakdown:

The WIN-dians were in town and my soul purpose of attending this game was to talk with Chris Perez. Prior to the game, I found out he had deleted his Twitter account. I’m not exactly sure why. My only guess was because he had that whole drug thing and fans were flipping his a bunch of BS over it.

Anyway, I never got to see Chris. Last year we had some Twitter dialogue that was pretty awesome and I wanted to re-connect on that and play a quick game of catch and thank him for his contributions to the Cleveland team. Didn’t happen.

I stayed the whole game down in the ‘Pen and it was hot! I know I got sunburnt, I could feel the sun roasting my face as I watched the game.

Here’s a couple memorable pictures I took during the game…

…and good ol’ Jaime on the bullpen phone:

I really had a bad feeling about being in the stadium. Not only were the Mariners on an eight-game winning streak, Safeco Joe was pitching. I know a lot of people like to hold themselves accountable for sports teams having their winning streaks broken up, and I suppose I was one of those people. All I heard in the ‘Pen throughout the game were people claiming they should’ve stayed home, this and that. I had to laugh because this was my exact feelings! I hadn’t been to a Mariners game for a long time. My last game attended was April 26th. As soon as the game started, the Mariners second basement booted an easy grounder and I just hung my head. It was all downhill from there. The Indians blew out the Mariners 10-1. Scott Kazmir was a tough pitcher to beat and he’s had a lot of success at Safeco.

I’ve still been keeping up on my charity promise to Bud Norris (who was traded to the Orioles) and the Candlelighters along with the Seattle Humane Society. Also, for those of you who keep up on this blog, I won’t be touring the Midwest this season. I had an awful run in with the IRS so it killed my vacation fund. The season ends for me on September 29th at Safeco Field. Next year, though, will be amazing. I plan on going to the season opener in Australia, and then I’m headed to Montreal on the 28th of March to watch the Mets and the BlueJays play in Olympic Stadium. After that, I’ll be spending a week or so in California visiting Dodger stadium and Chase Field in Arizona. Then it’s off to Miller Park and then the All-Star game in Minnesota! Plans, of course, always seem to change but I’ll be keeping things updated on this blog in case you’re at the ballpark and you want to say hi.

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